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It’s a no-brainer: every author needs a website and a blog to write about the topic of their books. To create an effective author website it needs some key elements. Please see also an article about custom-designed websites with a detailed checklist for you. Essential Elements of Your Author Website:
Your Blog.
Your blog drives traffic to your site – at least if you blog regularly and post these blogs on social media, first of all on Google+. This makes your site, as well as you and – most important – your books, discoverable. While the website part is static, the constant changes on your blog invites the search engine robots to your site.
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Write “Top List” Articles.
It is common knowledge for marketing professionals: 1% of any audience creates new ideas, 9% talk about the ideas, and the remaining 90% follows the conversation. By reaching the 1%, you can reach the 99%. It’s called “influencer” marketing.
To receive high-quality back links, you need to get the attention not only of your readers, book bloggers, reviewers, but also of influencers in book publishing. Create a blog post similar to the top 20 blogs in your niche. With this kind of article, you are giving a recommendation of blogs to read. It should invite some of the bloggers in your list to blog about it and link back to your article. To ensure that your article will get their attention, you can for example send them an email or mention them in your tweets about your blog post.
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Write Credible Content.
Don’t miss to mention reliable references or outbound links in order to give your content more credibility. Remember that SEO isn’t only about what you show to the search engines but also what you show and prove to your users. When you link to high-authority and relevant sites, you are also connecting to those sites, giving search engines a signal that your site is related to them.
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Website Design.
How do you want to brand yourself? And how do you want to design your web presence? Visitors to your site should know in seconds who you are and what you write.
Another important point is to design your website / blog mobile-friendly. 74% of North Americans used their smart phone to access the internet in 2013. According to Forbes, “87% of connected devices sales by 2017 will be tablets and smartphones.” And Google’s search engines ignore websites that are not mobile-friendly. It’s not expensive to have your website optimized for mobile devices: Get it done for a couple of dollars, at http://www.Fiverr.com/Denis555, along with even more improvements to bring more people to your website.
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About / Author Bio.
If your blog / website visitors know you, like and trust you, they will more likely purchase your books. Write your author bio in the first person and place it on the “About” page of your website. You could for example explain why you are writing, and why they should want to read your blog and your books. If you are writing non-fiction explain what makes you an expert in your area. Don’t forget to mention things that interest you, all in all, telling readers who you are.
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Social Media Sharing Buttons.
Make it easy for visitors to your site to both follow you on social media sites and to share your blog posts and your books with their followers and communities. Include links to all you social media sites on all your site pages. Add sharing buttons to ALL pages of your blog / website, which makes it easy for readers to share your posts.
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Follow Social Media Buttons.
WordPress has built-in follow widgets, but you can also code or ask your web designer to do it, or you can get them for free online, for example on shareaholic.com https://blog.shareaholic.com/introducing-follow-buttons/. Place them to each of your web pages to encourage readers following you on social media.
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Sidebar.
The area on the right or left of your website can be set up as a “sidebar.” Use the right space for a small search window, to list your blog archive, social media icons, blog categories, sign-up form for your blog / email newsletter (sign up for an email marketing service, such as MailChimp or Aweber.com) and maybe a follower counter. On the left bar place on top your latest bestseller and underneath all your other books, certainly “clickable” so that reader can easily order them.
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Sales Page for Each of Your Books.
It’s easy to feature your book or books on the home page of your site and provide a link to Amazon. However, a sales page will do a better job of getting people to purchase the book, even if the buy button takes them to Amazon. Create a sales page for each one of your books. This page should feature the book cover, describe the book, list its benefits and features, and provide testimonials, or blurbs. If you also offer other products and services, each one of these needs its own sales page, too.
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Media page.
Your author site should attract journalists too. Your media page makes should make it easy to get the information they need about you and your books. Radio, TV journalists and podcasters, Google Hangout on Air hosts and book bloggers need also high-resolution images in Tiff and jpeg.
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Contact Page.
Make it easy for your readers, the media, potential customers and clients to get in touch with you. Create a page that contains a contact form. These contact forms are ready-to-use contact plugins that you can download, for example from SitePoint.com
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Testimonials.
Include testimonials and review snippets from happy readers or customers or logos from the fabulous blog sites, also show videos from radio and TV shows, or copies from print publications where you and your work have appeared.
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A Must-Read before planning your website:
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition, by Steve Krug http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SEGQNS
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If you would like to get a mentor and our support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting / Book Marketing for your success: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars
To learn more about professional book marketing and publishing, please read also
“Book Marketing on a Shoestring”
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE
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